Water Quality

Water Outages

Cross Connection Control/Backflow Preventers

As your community water supplier, we have an obligation to provide safe, clean drinking water to all of our customers and take every precaution to prevent contaminants from entering the water system. To ensure this, each new commercial service and residential or commercial lawn sprinkler/irrigation service must have an approved backflow prevention assembly with thermal/weather protection installed at the service connection to the public water supply or immediately downstream of the service connection. The type of backflow assembly will be commensurate with the degree of hazard and must be approved by LAWCO. The customer shall install a Reduced Pressure Zone backflow prevention assembly to protect against the highest degree of hazard if we cannot determine the end use of the commercial service or if we determine that the end use of the commercial service could change. All backflow prevention devices shall meet the requirements of all applicable state and local codes or ordinances for water service including, but not limited to, the Louisiana State Plumbing Code and the Louisiana State Sanitary Code. Prior to initiating water service, the customer shall forward certification, signed by a certified and licensed Louisiana Master Plumber with a Water Supply Protection Specialist (WSPS) endorsement, stating that the installation is in compliance with all applicable codes. Contact your local customer service office for a copy of our Backflow Preventer Certification and Compliance form or click here to download.

Fire protection service connections are required to have an approved Reduced Pressure Detector backflow prevention assembly with thermal/weather protection at the service connection to the public water supply or immediately downstream of the service connection.

Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals mandates that water utilities implement, manage and enforce a Cross Connection Control program which includes inspecting/surveying individual water services to ensure compliance with State mandated cross connection control regulations, estabishing and maintaining a backflow preventer data base for each customer, notifying customers of annual backflow preventer maintenance testing requirements and tracking backflow preventer testing compliance. Each customer with a backflow preventer installed for domestic service, irrigation service or fire protection service will be charged a $4.00 per month backflow fee as part of the Cross Connection Control program.

The Louisiana State Plumbing Code requires that backflow prevention assemblies be tested annually, or more frequently if required in the Plumbing Code or by the manufacturer, and that the test results be submitted to the proper plumbing official and Louisiana Water Company in a timely manner. For a list of State licensed plumbers with a WSPS endorsement for your area, you can contact the Louisiana State Plumbing Board at (225) 756-3434 or review the list by Parish on their website at http://www.spbla.com/rosters-v3/. In addition, the Louisiana Department of Health & Hospitals maintains a list of current Approved General Testers on their website on the following link http://ldh.la.gov/assets/oph/Center-EH/engineering/CCC/LA_Approved_General_Testers.pdf

Contact your local customer service office for a copy of our Backflow Preventer Inspection and Test Report form or download the form here.

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